Fractional-in-time semilinear parabolic equations and applications (Q2191124)

In the present monograph, the authors address some topics related to the well-posedness problem (in the sense of Hadamard) of nonlocal partial differential equations, which, in the context of mathematical physics, are also often referred to as fractional in time parabolic equations, for which are known to possess solutions that exhibit anomalous behaviors. More concrete the authors are considered fractional kinetic equations characterized by the presence of a nonlinear time-dependent source, generally of arbitrary growth in the unknown function, a time derivative in the sense of Caputo, and the presence of a large class of diffusion operators. In general, the problem for $0<\alpha\leq 1$ has the form: \[ \partial _{t}^{\alpha }u=Au+f\text{ }(x,\text{ }t,\text{ }u),\left( x,t \right)\in X\text{ }\times (0,\text{ }T],\text{ }u\text{ }(x,0)={{u}_{0}},\,x\in X \] where $X$ stands for an appropriate physical domain and $f$ is a nonlinear, possibly time-dependent source, that is generally of arbitrary growth in the unknown function \(u\) and the operator \(A\) belong to a class ``diffusion'' operators (which class as partial case include all uniformly (second-order) elliptic operators with sufficiently smooth coefficients defined on a smooth domain). Besides classical examples involving the Laplace operator, subject to standard (namely Dirichlet, Neumann, Robin, dynamic/Wentzell, and Steklov) boundary conditions, their framework includes also nonstandard diffusion operators of ``fractional'' type subject to appropriate boundary conditions. Their aim is to give a unified scheme and analysis for the existence and uniqueness of strong and mild solutions and then deal separately with the global regularity problem. In addition, the authors extend the analysis to systems of fractional kinetic equations that include prey-predator models of Volterra-Lotka type and chemical reactions models, all of them containing possibly some fractional kinetics. The monograph consists of five chapters and three appendices -- A, B, and C. The introduction is given in Chapter 1 and consists of historical remarks, an overview of the main results presented in the monography and applications as well as and results on nonlocal reaction-diffusion systems. Chapter 2 is devoted to the functional framework and includes presentation ultracontractivity of the semigroup generated by operator \(A\), the resolvent families as well as and are given examples of sectorial operators. In Chapter 3 of this monograph, the authors first consider a semilinear fractional kinetic equation that is characterized by the presence of a nonlinear time-dependent source $f=f(x,t,u)$, a generalized time derivative \(\partial _{t}^{\alpha}\) in the sense of Caputo, and the presence of a large class of diffusion operators \(A\). Note that many examples of diffusion operators that satisfy the introduced assumptions are given in Sect. 2.3. They give a unified analysis, using tools in semigroups theory and the theory of partial differential equations (Sects. 2.1 and 2.2), in order to obtain sharp results for the well-posedness problem of mild and strong solutions (Sects. 3.1 and 3.2), as well as for the global regularity problem in Sect. 3.4. Further properties, such as nonnegativity of the mild (and/or strong) solutions and their limiting behavior as $\alpha\to 1$ from below, are also provided in Sects. 3.6 and 3.5, respectively. Finally, in Sect. 3.7 an application of these results is given. Chapter 4 is devoted to an extension of the framework developed by them for the scalar equation in Chapter 3. The results from Chapter 3 are extended in the second part of the monograph (Chap. 4) to nonlinear systems of fractional kinetic equations. Here, the authors first develop a general scheme that allows establishing sharp results for the well-posedness problem of (locally-defined) mild and strong solutions associated with such general systems (Sect. 4.1). They then combine this analysis with that of the previous chapters to derive well-posedness results in terms of globally defined mild and strong solutions, for a fractional prey-predator model (Sect. 4.2) and a simple fractional nuclear reaction model (Sect. 4.3). In Chapter 5 called Final Remarks and Open Problems, in addition, the authors provided a number of important technical tools in Appendix A, in support of the analysis developed in this monograph. The following Appendix B contains several results concerning the regional fractional Laplace operator associated with fractional Neumann and/or Robin boundary conditions. In the last Appendix C they recall the current scientific literature for different kinds of fractional kinetic equations that are suggested by concrete problems in mathematical physics, probability, and finance, and which fully motivate the analysis in this monograph. Furthermore, are given a number of final comments and discuss possible open problems.